Valorant

The Intel Core i7-12700K paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 delivers a high-refresh-rate Valorant experience, but the data reveals a clear ceiling tied to the graphics card’s memory and age. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 290 FPS average, which is the standout result across the entire measured dataset. However, pushing settings to Ultra at any resolution cuts that figure nearly in half, and the 4GB VRAM buffer becomes the primary constraint as resolution climbs. The following sections break down how to configure the game, what the GPU contributes, and where this pairing lands in the broader benchmark database.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows show a consistent pattern: Low settings always produce the highest frame rates, and the gap between Low and the next tier is substantial at every resolution. At 1920x1080, Low averages 290 FPS, which is 99.8 FPS ahead of Medium’s 190.2 FPS and 118.2 FPS ahead of Ultra’s 171.8 FPS. This is not a subtle difference—it is the difference between a locked 240Hz experience and one that occasionally dips below 200 FPS. For competitive play, where Valorant’s fast-paced gunfights reward every frame, Low is the only sensible choice if the goal is maximum smoothness.

The Medium preset offers a compromise: 190.2 FPS at 1080p, which still clears 144Hz monitors comfortably, but it costs roughly 34% of the Low preset’s headroom. High settings at 1080p drop to 177.6 FPS, and Ultra falls to 171.8 FPS. The performance deltas between Medium, High, and Ultra are relatively small—about 12.6 FPS between Medium and High, and 5.8 FPS between High and Ultra—which suggests the GPU is not the sole bottleneck at these settings. Instead, the RX 570’s 4GB memory and 256-bit bus are being saturated by higher texture and shading loads.

For users with 1440p monitors, the same logic applies but with lower absolute numbers. Low at 2560x1440 averages 244.7 FPS, which is still excellent, while Medium drops to 162.9 FPS, High to 155.5 FPS, and Ultra to 144.9 FPS. At 4K, Low remains playable at 196.4 FPS, but Medium falls to 125.8 FPS, High to 120.2 FPS, and Ultra to 115.9 FPS. The recommendation is unambiguous: run Low for the best experience, especially if your display refreshes above 144Hz. If visual fidelity is non-negotiable, Medium at 1080p is the highest preset that maintains a 190 FPS average, but it is a noticeable step down from Low’s 290 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is a Polaris 20 chip built on GCN 4.0 architecture, fabricated on a 14nm process from GlobalFoundries. It packs 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, with a base clock of 1168 MHz and a boost clock of 1244 MHz. The memory configuration is 4GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, delivering 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. That memory bandwidth is the defining feature here: 224.0 GB/s is respectable for the card’s era, but the 4GB capacity is the limiting factor in modern games like Valorant, which is designed to run on a wide range of hardware.

The benchmark data shows the GPU’s synthetic scores place it at the 74th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 30158. Its nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (deltaPct 0.2), AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (deltaPct 0.2), NVIDIA Tesla M60 (deltaPct 0.6), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.8). These deltas are tiny—all within 0.8% of the RX 570’s average score—which suggests the database’s aggregate metric clusters these very different cards together, but in-game performance diverges sharply due to architecture and driver optimizations.

In Valorant specifically, the GPU’s role is to keep up with the CPU’s frame generation. The i7-12700K is a 12-core, 20-thread Alder Lake processor with a boost clock of 5.00 GHz, and its single-thread performance is among the best in the database—witness the 3DMark single-thread score of 1043 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4128. The RX 570, by contrast, is an end-of-life product from 2017. At 1080p Low, the GPU manages to feed the CPU enough frames to reach 290 FPS, but at higher settings, the GPU’s texture and pixel throughput (39.81 GPixel/s pixel rate, 159.2 GTexel/s texture rate) becomes the bottleneck, capping frame rates around 170-190 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank in the database is 1558 out of 1650 tested combinations. That places it in the bottom 6% of all pairings, which is a surprising position given the high FPS numbers measured in Valorant. The explanation lies in the database’s methodology: the comboRankInGame field reflects a holistic score across many games and workloads, not just this one title. The RX 570’s age and 4GB VRAM drag down the aggregate, even though Valorant happens to run well on it.

Looking at the CPU’s individual standing, the i7-12700K sits at the 89th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35684. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 (avgScore 35802, deltaPct -0.3), Intel Core i7-13700T (avgScore 35468, deltaPct 0.6), Intel Core i5-14500HX (avgScore 35940, deltaPct -0.7), and Intel Core i7-13800H (avgScore 35416, deltaPct 0.8). These deltas are all within 0.8%, meaning the CPU is effectively in a dead heat with those four processors in synthetic benchmarks. The GPU, meanwhile, is at the 74th percentile for its class, but the combo rank of 1558/1650 tells the real story: the pairing is unbalanced, with a top-tier CPU shackled to a mid-range GPU from a previous generation.

In Valorant, this imbalance manifests as a CPU-bound scenario at Low settings—the 290 FPS at 1080p Low is likely close to what the CPU can produce, not what the GPU limits. But at Ultra settings, the GPU takes over as the limiter, and the FPS drops to 171.8 at 1080p, which is 118.2 FPS below the Low preset. The combo rank of 1558 suggests that in the broader database, this pairing underperforms relative to more balanced configurations, even though it delivers a playable esports experience.

FAQ

Q: Why does the combo rank so low (1558 out of 1650) if it hits 290 FPS in Valorant?

A: The comboRankInGame reflects a cross-game aggregate, not just Valorant. The RX 570’s 4GB VRAM and end-of-life status drag down its average benchmark score (30158, 74th percentile), which pulls the combo’s overall rank down despite the strong Valorant-specific results.

Q: What is the best preset for a 144Hz monitor?

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 290 FPS, which is the only setting that comfortably clears 240Hz. Medium at 190.2 FPS is sufficient for 144Hz, but High (177.6 FPS) and Ultra (171.8 FPS) are also above 144Hz, so any preset works for 144Hz. For 240Hz, Low is required.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The i7-12700K’s average benchmark score is 35684, with a percentile rank of 89. Its closest rival, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845, scores 35802, a delta of -0.3%. The Intel Core i7-13700T is 0.6% slower, the i5-14500HX is 0.7% slower, and the i7-13800H is 0.8% slower. All four are statistically tied.

Q: Is the GPU or CPU the bottleneck at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the FPS drops from 196.4 on Low to 115.9 on Ultra, a 80.5 FPS swing. This large drop indicates the GPU is the primary limiter at 4K, as the CPU’s single-thread strength (Cinebench R23 single-core score 4128) cannot compensate for the RX 570’s 224.0 GB/s bandwidth being overwhelmed by higher resolutions.

Q: What is the launch MSRP of each component?

A: The Intel Core i7-12700K has a launch MSRP of $409. The AMD Radeon RX 570 has a launch MSRP of 169 USD.

Q: Does the RX 570 support modern APIs needed for Valorant?

A: Yes, the RX 570 supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, which are all compatible with Valorant’s requirements. The card’s 14nm process node and 5,700 million transistors are dated, but API support is not a barrier.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 Low, the combo averages 290 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 Low drops that to 244.7 FPS, a reduction of 45.3 FPS or roughly 15.6%. At 3840x2160 Low, the average falls to 196.4 FPS, another 48.3 FPS drop from 1440p, totaling a 93.6 FPS loss from 1080p to 4K. This scaling is relatively mild for Low settings, indicating that the CPU and GPU are still working in tandem.

The story changes at higher presets. At Ultra, the 1080p average is 171.8 FPS, 1440p is 144.9 FPS, and 4K is 115.9 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 26.9 FPS, and from 1440p to 4K is 29.0 FPS, for a total 55.9 FPS loss. The percentage loss from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is 32.5%, compared to 32.3% at Low—nearly identical. This suggests the limiting component shifts subtly: at Low, the CPU’s frame generation capability is the ceiling, but as resolution rises, the GPU’s fill rate (39.81 GPixel/s) and memory bandwidth (224.0 GB/s) become increasingly strained.

Comparing Medium across resolutions: 1080p Medium is 190.2 FPS, 1440p Medium is 162.9 FPS, and 4K Medium is 125.8 FPS. The 4K Medium figure (125.8 FPS) is close to the 4K High (120.2 FPS) and 4K Ultra (115.9 FPS), indicating that beyond Medium, the GPU is hitting a hard wall at 4K. The RX 570’s 4GB VRAM is likely spilling over at 4K with higher texture settings, causing the frame rate to plateau around 115-125 FPS regardless of preset. This plateau is the signature of a memory-bandwidth-bound GPU, not a compute-bound one. The data shows that the i7-12700K has ample headroom—its 3DMark max threads score of 9979 and Cinebench R23 multicore score of 29241 are far beyond what Valorant needs—so the GPU’s 224.0 GB/s bandwidth is the definitive bottleneck at 4K. For users targeting 4K, the Low preset at 196.4 FPS is the only viable option, but even that is 93.6 FPS below the 1080p Low peak, reinforcing that this combo is best suited for 1080p or 1440p competitive play.